bitcoin

Bitcoin seems on an unstoppable tear. Rising from about USD 700 in January 2017, to about USD 11,000 in early December and now to about USD 15,000 as of mid-December, the cryptocurrency has ‘crushed its enemies, and seen them driven before it’. Many commentators claim Bitcoin is a bubble, after all, so the thinking goes, what do markets do but arbitrarily rise, and then randomly crash, causing havoc?

Venezuela has been the last to join the cryptocurrency trend by launchinng the so called “petro” in order to combat the US blockade. As reported by Chris Iggo, CIO Fixed Income, at AXA IM, “all the volatility in financial markets seems to have been transported into the virtual world of bitcoin trading”

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) issued last week a statement banning ICOs, while also planning to shut down local cryptocurrency exchanges. In order to combat capital flight, money laundering and other fraudulent activities, Chinese authorities have decided to disallow trading between fiat currencies and digital currencies within China. This has led to prices of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin sliding over the weekend.

FRANKFURT | By Dr. Beate Reszat | The other day, the New York Times provided us with an example of how fads and fashions can be used to draw attention to, and win acceptance for, an economic argument. In his article ‘In Search of a Stable Electronic Currency’ Nobel laureate Robert Shiller proposed the introduction of an inflation-indexed unit of account similar to the Chilean unit of development or unidad de foment (UF) which is existing since the 1960s. The article is in large parts a summary of the ideas of an academic paper the author published in 1998. In short, its main argument says that recent progress in computer technology has considerably widened the possibilities of inflation indexing which would allow for a better pricing, contracting and risk management in an economy.

BEIJING | By Liu Xiao via Caixin | The People’s Bank of China is the first regulator in the world to issue rules on the virtual currency, a move that prevents a Bitcoin breakthrough. Apparently, what really concerns the central bank is bitcoins replacing the yuan.

MADRID | By Luis Arroyo | Bitcoin is increasingly present everywhere: newspapers, books, all over the Internet… and everybody seems to be infatuated with this new currency. However, it isn’t as fabulous as they make us think. It’s tricky and it could endanger even more the already damaged global economies.

NEW YORK |An encrypted virtual currency traded over the Internet that can be purchased through online exchanges using real money. Four years ago bitcoin seemed like sci-fi but today it is already a 1-billion-dollar market. And many businesses are accepting it as a payment currency. Anthony Gallippi is CEO of BitPay, an Atlanta based Payment Service Provider (PSP) specializing in eCommerce, B2B, and enterprise solutions for virtual currencies. He explained to The Corner how BitPay enables companies to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon.